Basics of Electrical Symbols and Why we need them

Electrical symbols are simplified and clean representation of circuit components. Electrical Engineering involves the study of physical circuits which involve the components such as resistors, wires, batteries, lamps, fuses and multimeters. There are two methods which can be used for visualizing these components:

Pictorial view of components by drawing them as they actually look.

To use the symbols for representing them

Both these methods are equally useful since a pircotorial view helps to understand how the components will look physically, however it is a tedious task to draw the physical components. Due to this reason electrical circuits are drawn by using symbols.

The image below displays most common types of symbols that are used in electrical circuits.